Yahoo has launched its free Yahoo Video Search feature, and its index will include adult-oriented material, but it will also include safeguards to keep minors and those who don't want adult material from having to see it unwillingly, the company said May 5.
"Our index does include adult material, just like our images, and we crawl the Web for any avalable content people post," Yahoo public relations manager Kathryn Kelly says.
"But we do have safe-search filters that allow you to weed out that kind of content, and it will give you a warning that, if it does finds that kind of content, the results may have adult-oriented content," Kelly continues. "And we also have a feature allowing parents to block children from under 18 to use the feature. We've had that forever, from even just the regular Yahoo portal. And we've adopted the same policy across images and search."
Yahoo Video Search indexes streaming and downloadable video content available online, letting you hunt clips by keyword. The content includes outside video or film providers as well as movie trailers from Yahoo Movies and music videos from Yahoo Music.
Yahoo had beta-tested the new Video Search since December and, for the official May 5 launch, added new content from sources like Buena Vista Pictures, CBS News, MTV, Reuters, Scripps-Howard, and other sources. The company said Google's video search service remains in beta testing, which began in January.
"Yahoo! Video Search provides consumers with a comprehensive source for video on the Web," Yahoo head of media search engineering John Thrall said in a formal statement. "Our powerful media crawling, extraction, and ranking technology, as well as our broad relationships with content partners, enable Yahoo! Video Search to provide users with the leading online video search experience."
Yahoo had already struck Video Search partnerships with TVEyes (Bloomberg video broadcasts), Internet Broadcast Systems (a national network of local news video), iFilm, The One Network, and Stupid Videos, as well as for content from independent providers and online video sites.
MTV and CBS both praised the new Yahoo Video Search. "Yahoo Video Search caters directly to MTV Networks' global network and fan base," MTV Networks and Music Group senior vice president Jason Hirschhorn says, "so users have the ability to access our content in an even more customizable way."
"This relationship greatly expands the number of users who will have immediate access to our vast reservoir of current and historical broadband CBS News video—all for free," CBS News vice president for business development, Betsy Morgan, says.
Other content now in the Yahoo Video Search index includes content from CMT (the country music cable television channel), the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, the Travel Channel, the Science Channel, and VH1.
